


Vaya Con Dios

by Rabid_X



Category: The Losers (Comic)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, Gen, Hacking, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 07:46:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/636686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rabid_X/pseuds/Rabid_X
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The beach is nice and all but Jensen cannot rest. Not yet. There's still work to be done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vaya Con Dios

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: DC Vertigo, Andy Diggle and Jock are the responsible parties. I am the irresponsible party who makes no cash here.  
> Warnings: CHARACTER DEATHS. I don’t think anyone will be too upset though.  
> Word Count: 2885  
> Notes: For losers_pwn (live journal) “Tears” challenge.  
> Original live journal post: May 28th, 2011

Antigua was nice. Sunny, perfect beaches to laze on, cervezas to drink, waves to occasionally catch... a fucking paradise. Jensen hated it. Clay was dead, Cougar was dead, Aisha was gone... but Pooch came to the rescue so there was that. Dragged his ass to paradise and waited.

Jensen dragged bottles to his room and drank, curling up in his bed and staring at his laptop. He didn't cry or mope, he just drank and stared. Pooch brought food and threatened to force it down Jensen's throat. When that didn't work, he made it an order. Jensen took the hint and ate a little and even wandered outside a couple of times. He let himself get a lobster-red sunburn and crawled back inside and into a cold tub to drink more.

Jolene showed up with the girls and took one look at Jake. "Well, he's old enough to drink but that doesn't mean we have to let him die from it."

Pooch got the message and started _asking_ Jensen to eat with them. Just a quiet invitation that eventually got through the alcoholic haze enough to spur Jensen to the family table. 

The girls wanted to know who the hobo was and why he smelled so bad.

Jensen showered that night after the last of the cheap tequila wore off. He got the giggles looking at his face post-shave. It was red everywhere but where his beard had grown. He looked like a fucked up clown but it was better than a hobo.

The girls thought so too.

Stegler's appearance after a year actually put a smile on his face. There was something beautiful about being offered a plum job, one that would perhaps let you do the very things you wish you could and to shove the middle finger in someone's face. Stegler tried for a few moments to protest, finally throwing down a card that had just a number on it and leaving. They took bets on if the card would self-destruct.

Pooch set it on fire in the flame of the citronella candle on their table when it didn't. Jensen didn't care, he'd memorized the number. He was sure he wouldn't use it except as a last resort but the very stark white card and pitch black print slapped him in the face.

It was time to stop wallowing.

*****

Aisha should've been harder to find the first time so he didn't approach. He stayed in his rat hole (Literally. He was starting to name them) basement apartment in New York. The small window there was had been coated with so much stale cigarette smoke on the inside and city gunk outside it stayed dark. 

It stayed cold too, but he didn't mind that either. The custom rig he was running kept him warm enough to strip down to his skivvies most times and he always had his laptop to keep that part of him warm.

He spent his time studying the killer bitch's movements via traffic, ATM and security cameras. She was dressed like a street punk most of the time, except when she went to a huge brownstone. Then she dressed almost like a college student, very bohemian and close enough to what he though was her real style.

She never looked over her shoulder, even when she took a couple of veiled women out to shop. His momma might've tried to raise a fool but he didn't listen. This was a trap for someone. 

Two nights later, he watched her shallowly slit a man's throat and taunt him while he bled out. He ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while staring at the screen and wondered who the guy was. He got a good, if grainy black and white off the security footage before Aisha noticed the camera and pulsed it with a heavy, squared off gun.

New toy. He'd have to get that from her. Maybe beat her head in with it. No... too cool. He could use a scrambler like that. Of course she probably killed everyone in the building that had the camera on it but it was sloppy to get caught in the first place.

Then again, her and her friends were part of the reason everyone was almost always on camera in the big cities. Made his job easier, made hers harder.

*****

Paris was confusing and colder than New York. Or maybe it was just the lack of central heating in the old building where he'd set up shop. He kept fingerless gloves on and made hobo hacker jokes to the equally frozen looking pigeons on his windowsill. 

New York _had_ been a trap. Aisha had apparently meant to get caught and she'd killed the shit out of a retired Marine captain who'd become a NYC detective. The man had been sodomized and slowly burnt alive, starting with his feet. He'd gotten his hands on the autopsy file and upgraded the NYC Crime Lab's computer security while he did it - leaving himself a backdoor of course. The pictures made him sad and hungry for barbecue and he was pretty sure he was loosing his shit.

He was dreaming about Cougar's kids every other night when he could sleep.

Right back there in the desert, the sand scourging at them as the chopper took off. They were tired but happy. Then he'd get the burst and fuss on his radio and snag that transmission and since it was a dream and he lived the real thing, the dream-him knew what was going to happen and no amount of lucid dreaming as going to change the outcome.

The chopper got hit.

The chopper went down.

Kids died screaming and burning right in front of Cougar's outstretched hand.

He would wake up with a headache and bloody lips from biting them, stifling the shout of agony. How in the fuck was he Cougar now? How did he see those little arms reaching for him, hear those little cries? Feel the flames boil the tears from his eyes as he cried?

Bitch was going to pay.

Logically, he knew those kids had nothing to do with Aisha per se. They were just her old man's drug mules. How in the hell could she just sit by and be proud of a father or people who did that shit? How was this the Loser's faults?

*****

He stared at her on the screen, all smooth curves underneath the red dress she wore. That was weird enough for a hard-ass like her but she was laughing as she danced with the older man. They spun around the dance floor chatting like old friends.

Freaked him out. He knew she was good at the hard stuff, but the soft sell? Even Clay probably hadn't gotten the soft sell _while_ she was fucking him. Maybe she did really just know the guy.

He scratched absently at his bare chin and sighed. The security room was hot and the monitor system was pretty shitty for such an expensive place. And he'd had to shave for the gig right after he'd gotten the chin warmer at the proper length too. 

Monte Carlo sucked. It was too hot and too glitzy.

Getting the job? Piece of silicon cake for MasterBlaster_HoboHacker - his new and most favoritest of tags. His security checks and resume were part truth, part someone else's and part unicorns and leprechauns. He was even drafting a plan for a system-wide upgrade with his hidden backdoor.

But the bitch was dancing with some Dos Equis commercial reject and even the sweet lure of code wasn't keeping his frustration and anger in check. He needed a smoke and vengeance. 

"That was a cheesy line even for me," Jensen shook his head even as he giggled. "C'mon, go have sex with him so I can kill you and go home."

Ah, he mused as the happy couple wandered off the dance floor, if only that easy. 

*****

Why the fuck had he thought this hack would be easy? 

Hacking the data files of a Swedish artist should've been a cake walk. Get onto his network, see what the bitch wanted and waltz out. 

No one hacked like in the movies.

This guy kinda did.

He also spoke in bullshit semi-leet and kept throwing messages out for Jensen to find. Jen tried to ignore them, he really did. They took time away from the re-routing of his signal that the madman on the other end was fucking tracing IRT and fast.

_U call u a hacker?_

"Fuck off," Jen said and typed even while double back bouncing through Brazil.

_Kiddies shouldn't play w/adults. Kinky cracker._

"Suck my left nut, grand... wait a sec," He completed the re-route and erased his IM. Cracker was old school lingo that free software guys from the 60s, 70s and 80s used to call computer security guys. 

"Hello, old man. I just wanna know what the lady wanted. Something old or something GNU?"

Jensen waited, watching the blank place where the next message would come. 

_Not very original._

"Well excuse the fuck outta me. I'm not some script kiddie trying to impress you. I want to know what the..." He typed 'bitch' in three times before erasing it.

"I want to know what Aisha wanted."

His computer screen went black at the same time someone pounded on the door 

Roque once told him that, in a fight, everything got all movie slow motion for him. Jensen had nodded like he understood but he didn't. Then he had his first SpecOps cluster fuck and everything indeed slowed down. He'd felt like a god once it was over.

His hand slapped down on his laptop and he scooped it into his backpack. That got slung on his shoulder even as his other hand snatched up his coat. The weight of the gun on his hip and the hidden one jury-rigged into his coat lining made him smile. The slam of a body against the door made him laugh and he tugged his coat up vampire cape style in front of his face and dove out the window.

Double-paned glass sucked to break and he was glad he’d thought to score it first, hearing Pooch in his head talking about Boy Scout preparedness when he did. He still caught a shard in his left arm and he hissed as he rolled to his feet. Wasn't huge so he left it in to stop the blood flow for the time being. 

He took seven long strides, trying to pick up speed on the snow and ice and was just starting to think he’d over reacted when gunfire peppered the snow next to him. Nope someone was, in fact, shooting at him. If it was Aisha, she certainly knew he was here. 

A tuck roll got him around a corner between his little hotel and the next building and he couldn’t help the little laugh that escaped. Shoot ‘em up in a major city was not his idea of fun but near death scrapes were something he’d missed as sick as that was to think about. He had to get his coat on because it was cold as fuck out here but that damn piece of glass was sticking out of his arm and how the hell long would it take for the cops to show up? 

He was starting to miss Antigua just a little.

“Fuck it,” he whispered and tugged the coat on. The bit of glass snagged and he groaned in pain. Where the hell was his adrenaline dump?

The slow motion had faded to normal time when he heard sirens in the distance. He reshouldered his pack and one hand carefully on his gun, slipped down the alley and out the other side. The key was to be casual and blend in with the nighttime crowd. He’d almost managed a clean get away when he felt a point against his back.

“Keep walking, laughing boy, very. Fucking. Slowly. Or I stab your liver and leave you to bleed out.”

“Aisha, babe,” he grinned despite himself. “How have you been? Damn, I missed you.”

“And I promise I won’t miss.”

Jensen sighed but kept walking. “That was not a great line. I thought you always had great lines.”

“Shut up,” her voice was tight and… tired?

“Stab me then, because you know I won’t stop talking. I can’t. I have a medical condition. Following you around for the past year has been a solo gig and I have metric fuck-tons of words just dying to come out.”

“Allah… Jake, just shut up for a moment. Right now I am saving your life.”

He frowned. “Bullshit. Maybe saving me for death later but what the fuck are you talking about?”

The knife pressed in through his coat and he gritted his teeth against the flare of pain. She’d cut him and the point was riding just under his skin. “I don’t have time for your bullshit, Jensen. You are being tailed.”

“By you and your artist buddy.”

It was Aisha’s turn to sigh. “No, dipshit, by someone else. I have to make sure you get out of this one so they don’t get to _me_ following your clumsy breadcrumbs.”

She shoved him down another alley, knife bleeding him, other hand fisted in his coat. He tried to pull away and she swung him into a wall. He turned his head in time to keep his nose from breaking on the brick, glasses skewing wildly instead. 

He tried to swing the backpack around to hit her but she danced back and lashed a foot up to kick the gun out of his hand. It spun gracefully away and he ducked the arc of her knife. Her slight surprise at his speed gave him the opening he needed and he brought the pack back around to smash across her arm, the knife wheeling off to join his gun.

He didn’t let her catch a breath before bull-rushing her, shoulder deep into her stomach. She folded over his back and he smashed her against the opposite wall. Then he pushed himself backwards, letting her slide down into semi-frozen alley muck.

Her eyes blazed at him as she tried to catch her breath. “You… stupid moron… Max is following you.”

“He knows that.”

Jensen couldn’t help but grin at the look of shock on her face as Max, the remaining Max, oozed into the alley from the other side. His gun was steady and aimed at her head. “He’s not as good a fighter as Wade but he is a hell of an informant.”

“Aw thanks, I feel all warm inside,” Jensen said, adjusting his glasses.

“This is usually the point where I gloat but I’ve learned a few things the past couple of years,” Max said, advancing. “And the main thing I learned is this.”

The gunshot was not loud, just a sharp pop through the suppressor and Aisha’s head snapped back, brains splattering the wall. 

“Whoa!” Jensen held his hands up. “I thought you were going to interrogate her or something, Max!”

Max grinned and shook his head. “Why would I waste time with that? I have all the information I need from you. I don’t need her anymore. In fact, I don’t need you anymore.”

Max turned his pistol towards him and Jensen shoved his hand into his coat. A feral grin formed as he yanked hard, glass grinding against the bone in his arm. He jerked to the side sloppily, and jerked his hand in the slick lining of his coat.

The look of surprise on Max’s face was perfect. He stumbled and slid down the wall next to Aisha’s body. “You…”

“Fucking shot you, yeah.” Jensen said and did it again.

*****

“So you got them both?”

Jensen grinned at Pooch and took another sip of his beer. “Yup.”

“Without backup.”

“Oh hell no. I called Stegler. He was very interested in my idea and got my ass out of Stockholm.”

Pooch frowned and leaned across the table, eyes hard. “So what, you back on the payroll?”

Jensen shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “I am not an idiot. This was a one time thing. Call me a mercenary if you must.”

“Gonna call you a fucking asshole for not telling me,” Pooch growled.

Jensen sighed and stared out over the beach. His throat got tight and his eyes stung. “I had to get some sleep, Pooch. I… I owed them. Yeah Max fucked our nifty little careers but you weren’t there. You didn’t smell Clay burning or see Cougar’s face, man. And you should thank God every night you get to sleep next to Jolene you didn’t. I gotta hear it, see it and smell it. Add in Cougar’s kids and I haven’t slept right in two damn years. Sure it was fucking stupid and maybe suicidal but maybe I can get some sleep.” 

Pooch sat quietly, watching the tears slowly fall down Jensen’s cheeks. He saw the shake in Jensen’s hands and the bandage wrapped around his left arm and sighed. 

“Vaya con dios then.”

Jensen smiled slightly. “Vaya con dios.”


End file.
